Have an honest New Year

The countdown has begun for the next New Year. Yet another year, another decade. And the rush to celebrate – infectious. Seriously, this I have to be at someplace glitzy on the New Year eve is running around like a bad flu. Of course! We do need a bright start to everything including the New Year, but aping and imitating others may not be the way to do it. If you think I’m a pessimistic fool, ok I’ll bite it; let’s ask ourselves what are our plans?

More importantly, what would you really want to do this New Year? And while you are at that thinking stage for once refrain from browsing the net, calling up friends to find out their plans, or adjusting your day to the TV shows. Invariably we are slaves to what is offered on the promos or what our friends are doing or tuned to the tele.

‘What’s wrong with wanting to party with friends?’ you may ask. Nothing provided that is what you want to do this New Year. Let it not be a pre ordained mission. So let’s get back to that thinking process and let’s first look into ourselves and find out what we want to do on the 1^st of Jan, 2011. You might be surprised at the actual number of original ideas your minds are capable of making.

But at the end of it, if it is your choice to follow friends and sit out all the TV shows, be it again as your choice and enjoy the New Year!!

May this New Year be your best yet!

 

Paradigm Shift

I have been the believer of the magic of languages and its ability to form better relationships ever since my childhood days, trotting along with my dad in his various transfers along the country. And being in a multi-religious, multi-linguistic country like India, where around 33 different languages and 2000 dialects are identified in usage, picking up 5-6 of them did not seem so difficult.

But the importance of languages changed from being just a mode of expression to many things as I grew older. Better friendships in teenage with people who could speak the language. At a time I was the close friend of many groups of people.  My linguistic prowess showed its better features as I grew up and ventured alone in this wide world. A favour here, an easy booking there, people I found out where bound to their languages. Truly language had hidden powers, beyond the squeak of words.

As in the words of Angela Carter, Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

So three years back when I came to Dubai, the magical land of Middle East, I was thrilled to get a chance to learn the lyrical Arabic. The Arabic language has a lyrical tilt in its words and the script just flows off the pages. A truly artistic language. I was really excited to be able catch the language on the streets so to speak and thus learn it the native way. (I had learnt all my other languages by just being in the city).

But the shock came in a few days of my being in Dubai. The shops, cabs, cleaners, workers, vendors, everyone could speak English, Chinese, Indian and Arabic. I simply didn’t get a chance to learn. So I armed myself with books and an online course to embark this learning experience. But the fun was just not there and Google just about translates everything.  The technology today has made learning something new unnecessary. Languages transcend the borders of mere communication to give us a glimpse of their culture, but modern times have it made it too easy for us to bothered to learn them.

As Friedrich Hebbel rightly put in perspective, “ If language had been the creation not of poetry but of logic, we should only have one.“

 

Google acknowledges Children’s Day in India

Google has changed its Doodle to commemorate the children’s day in India. 

Celebrated on November 14th the date marking the B’day of India’s first Prime Minister Pt Jawarharlal Nehru.

Thanks Google and way to go India!

The Human cuddle

The paper today had an article on cuddling being very good for health. I was happy, since I pamper and cuddle my kids a lot. But the shocking issue was the article described the whole concept like shouting for ‘save the earth’ help slogans. Apparently cuddling increases the oxytocin in the body… how many of us think of things like that while cuddling? And the icing on the cake! Due to increasing single humans, there are cuddling classes! Why don’t you take a bloody injection in oxytocin? Would save a lot of energy.

What has the world come to? Early morning laughing therapy to improve the heart, cuddling classes to increase the oxytocin in blood, are we sure we are the Homo sapiens and not some silly amoeba under a petri-dish?

You want to know how to cuddle? Learn it from your kids and yes, the increasingly single population can learn it from their aged parents. I am sure they lived long enough without the Google to not have forgotten how to and the present day amoebae, do not Google this plueassee…..

There is a certain feeling of coming home to in the arms of a loved one, the soft chubby touches of a baby, the tight hug of a friend, the tentative one of a new boyfriend, the cuddle of a husband that simply never stops just there…. Don’t spoil this with a freaky class. We are humans, I am sure even the present mutant varieties can come up with a bit of genuine emotion.

So let’s stay human!

Parenting 101

“When will my plants grow mom?” My daughter has been asking this question for the last ten hours.

A science project, to grow small lentil plants from seeds has had her hyper excited and every now and then after drowning her seeds in some more water; she’ll urge them to grow.

“Patience is a virtue, Prinks” I said looking up from my work.

“What’s ‘wertoo’ and how’s waiting different from patience?” Her confused expression made me smile.

But really how do I explain patience to a child who is growing in a world where there is very little of it? And virtue? Many would know it as the virtual desktop manager for Mac OS than its meaning in moral excellence.

We are on call with friends, colleagues, everyone, 24 hrs. From cooking, cleaning to music and games download everything happens in seconds. Do you need to remember the shopping list? No there’s a 24 hr supermarket that gives free home delivery right around the corner… so go ahead and live for the minute.

My grandma would have called the expectant wait for the soup to simmer until the aroma fills the house as patience. Hard to point that out with ripping open a packet and pouring it over boiling water.

There used to be a period of waiting in my childhood, an expectation at the end of it. Be it for the ‘Chitrahaar’ every Friday or the episode of Fauji, or even a letter from a friend. The eagerly awaited greeting cards for birthdays, even the crank ones for Valentines carelessly showed down my mail box. The email, CDs and mobile phones have taken away these simple pleasures.

The day and age for such things are no more there. Slightly difficult for a seven year old to comprehend that afew things just take time and sometimes it’s for the best.

But for now I just told my daughter, “Darling look at those plants. They grow slowly, first the roots, then shoots, leaves and finally beautiful flowers. They do it slowly against your enthusiastic flooding, against winds and bad weather. This expectant steadiness is patience – a great quality, a virtue”

 

 

 

Brandstreaming

The rapidly proliferating numbers of social media platforms makes choice a difficult decision. What to post where and how many times and to whom to target? Most important of all is the aggregation of these platforms. Lifestreaming is the new way of documenting all your activities and thoughts on the web; an aggregation of multiple RSS feeds.

From a marketing angle this aggregation of your digital footprint is equivalent to creating an online brand positioning. Thus in the social media space its creating a “ BRANDSTREAM”. Thus brandstreaming is a consistent creation of content on the various social platforms and aggregating the same – videos, podcasts, blogs, twitter, interactions, press releases, customer feedback, whitepapers etc in a single stream.

Thus the social platforms that help you shout about your website in the large cyberspace allows a clear integration of online channels and thus create a definitive brand image.

Used correctly it is a very powerful branding tool, but the catch is the correct usage. It makes sense for the Organization to stream all their content but why should a customer watch you everywhere? Especially when your twitter update, Facebook fan page, and your email give the same link to an article published in your blog for which you give out an RSS feed as well. This kind of repetition is not brand streaming it is customer choking.

Hence if you want to create a great Brand stream follow these 3 steps to success:

1. Be original and unique – This is your golden chance, having all the social platforms – hence make sure you truly create a unique experience. While you can magnify your pluses, remember your negatives through the same glass!!
2. Create consistent image – All the content, be it words, audio, video or photos should be consistent and in line with your brand positioning.
3. Create varied content – Do not write the same article and create different links to it. Be more creative!

Make sure the cyberspace has a unique place for your digital foot print.

Sweetly different

How can a bit of malt, glucose, sugar and cocoa powder be made different? Just look into the huge chocolate industry. The confectionery industry has moved a long way from creating just chocolates of different shapes, sizes and flavors to more niche, branded, luxury and personal positioning.

From the colorful Gems, M&Ms, Poppins for kids to sugar free chocolates for diabetics and weight watchers to the premium Belgian and dark chocolates there is something for everyone’s sweet tooth. But to a brand enthusiast, there is a whole lot more. Unlike the beverages market where the brand positioning mostly is comparative in nature, here the players try imaginative and unique positioning. While Carburys celebrates, your everyday break time snacks Kit Kat and all can afford Munch make your day. From the delicious gum to the bite sized, gift wrapped gems of creamy American classic – Hersheys the market is well branded.

Today Cadburys has taken this one step farther and in line with the mobile revolution. Their SMS range of chocolates allows personalized messages like ‘sorry’, ‘thank you’, ‘love you’, or ‘miss you’ to be given as a gift.

Branded confectionery has become very popular especially the brand extensions. Even in this recession the industry is doing good as chocolates are considered as a cheap and available luxury. While private labels are not a popular feature in this industry, the supply chain has brought in its own mark into the market.

Candylicious – the largest candy store in the world spanning over 10,000 square feet is a concept representing fantasy, joy and irreplaceable childhood memories, combining candy and the world of imagination into a hip and fashion-forward store. A visually mesmerizing store with pillars of candy, a tree of lollipops and a huge collection of premium chocolates. It is the chocolate wonderland.

Well! There’s more to life than chocolate, but not right now

Will fragrant store make registers soar?

I’m on a diet. Truly! My new dietary commandments are:

Thou shall live on fruits and veggies

Thou shall eschew cakes and pastries

So I’m going shopping. Low carb, zero fat, healthy food shopping. But no sooner than I enter the supermarket, the warm smell of baking bread hits my nostrils. Yumm… my legs follow the olfactory trail even as my grey cells scream to stop.

Baking bread, freshly brewed coffee, the heady scent of coconut oil at Kerala Chips have enticed and lured customers for ages. Today this neuromarketing has entered scientifically to our retail stores. In store fragrancing has been given a lot of importance in the present times and why not? In a huge mall often corner shops get no visibility. But Cookie Man makes sure that your nose knows the way even if your eyes miss it. Of course it’s typical for bakeries, restaurants, food joints and even perfumeries to entice customers through fragrances but what is astonishing is that even non-food companies have started this trend.

Baby powder scent diffused in children’s clothing store or fresh lime scent in the cleaning products aisle in a hypermarket or even a good pine scent in a furniture store are classic examples of using in store fragrancing to enhance the satisfaction of your customers, but today stores are also going in for signature perfumes. Samsung has a signature scent of green melon and Sony uses a concoction of citrus, vanilla and other ingredients in its own signature scent. Even General Motors have started using a signature scent in their dealerships. Air Aroma – the largest supplier of scent diffusion technology in the world says the demand is only growing, even in this recession.

While research shows that sight is 75% smell and a scent congruent with the brand does increase profits, it still is a tricky deal. If your store’s fragrances to the customer’s nostril stink, your profits will surely sink! No one likes to walk into a wall of perfume hence the fragrance should be light and pleasant.

Of course heaven forbid the situation where your customer is hypersensitive to scents!

Another interesting twist to ponder upon is if everyone scrambles to diffuse their signature perfumes what would the mall on a whole smell like…. Aroma traffic jam! The new word will hit the dictionaries soon. Imagine an Italian food joint (with its heavy garlic smell) sandwiched between a women’s designer boutique and a gifts shop selling scented candles. So what will you have? Pine fresh pasta or garlic chiffon?

Man – The Virus!

The Universal bulletin board.

Beware of a certain species of living being on planet earth.

Caution! Highly infectious. Causes slow damage to the world while talking about saving it.

A very cold blooded animal that kills for pleasure and blames it on the species malfunctioning mind. High survival instincts. Can amputate its own limb for survival and feel proud about it.

Claims of a sixth sense but is often seen using it only in destruction. Defined as a social animal practices greed, jealousy, envy, perverseness and hypocrisy in a crowd.

The only species that takes and gives nothing back to the ecosystem.

Special mention – Stay away from the smiling variety. They are lethal.

All flora and fauna are requested to stay away from this deadly species. No vaccines or antibiotics have yet been invented against them.

Ubiquitous Customization is Commoditization

The Retail industry revolves around the Consumer. More than other places, in retail the customer is the King, the Queen, the reigning monarch around which all business process works.  Customers today have increasingly become more demanding and knowledgeable and satisfying them has become the greatest career and hobby for all members of the board.

Retail Organizations struggle to create a differentiation to brand their Store. The retailer’s inability to create a differentiation from its competitors is the biggest and longest standing issue in retailing. But the obstacles are many. Retail is a low entry barrier highly replicable industry. But the sands of time has shown the tremendous growth of the retailers – from the Cretans who first started trade in barter form to the Shoppertainment malls of today, retailers have stretched to please their consumers.

The initial differentiations were in slashing down prices. When discount stores started becoming common, price promotions started. This copied to many stores offering year round discounts. Slowly the shift turned towards creating great experiences. The malls developed with cafes and rest and recreation areas. Slowly this assumed gigantic proportions in the name of the likes of Cabelas, Dubai Mall, and Mall of Emirates etc.  Today most malls look the same have the same luxury retailers, offer the same 7-8 popular movies and the same eat out branches. So how is one different from another?

The wheels are turning again. This time round it’s for the web2.0 consumers. The Gen Y group that’s totally insensitive to the mass marketing initiatives and wants every product customized and every service personalized. We have seen the customization of e greeting cards, your photo on your T-shirt, personalized jewellery, stationery etc. but they all do get copied by competitors. There are some retailers who have done very innovative customization. Nike has a concept called NikeID where the consumer gets to design the kind of shoes he wants. But can this be impossible to replicate?

Then where is the differentiation? If every retailer is ready to sell you exactly customized products and personalized services, there is no differentiation.

In the eyes of Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, in the world of increasingly commodity-like products and services, a relationship founded on trust is the only genuinely sustainable competitive advantage.

So there Retailers! Are you listening?

Place a chair, show you care!

How many times have you gone shopping and longed for a chair to rest, to catch your breath? How many times have you been forced to abandon the shopping spree ‘coz your husband got bored of standing? Or how many times you did not check out that lingerie aisle because it was filled with waiting men? Sounds familiar?

While retailers try everything to attract customers to their stores, their efforts would be a success only if the customers stay long enough to buy and are comfortable to be able to come back. Most shopping be it grocery or apparel is done by women. By the word woman understand it means strollers, children and husbands irritated in the sheer waste of time shopping rather than watch the latest match on TV. If you don’t give them a space to sit, your precious customers- the woman will be forced to make a hasty dash to grab what she came for and the rest of the sales that generally happens if allow her to look through will be permanently stored in your inventory.

Now try and place that all important chair towards the end of the woman’s clothing aisle, just before the Men’s range begins and trying placing the socks and ties near the seating range. Whoa! Be ready to order more merchandise to stock up your ties and socks inventory.

The chair in a store – a structure so totally unrecognized can make such a difference to your sales. Imagine a spa; men and woman alike come to relax and unwind under the trained hands of the beautician. Placing chairs in a common room with noisy television would spoil the whole purpose of having a spa. Here you need individual seating or reclining units with complete privacy. The same when in a fast food joint the more-the-merrier culture would want clustered seating.

In a bookstore we often would want to read the preface and chapters before a purchase. A few carefully placed chairs would be a huge welcome rather than reading while juggling with the other books and standing in narrow aisles constantly brushing with other customers.

Of course while talking of seating the most important factor is where the chairs are placed. Many a times wrongly placed seating can prove very detrimental to your sales. Imagine a group of waiting men in the apparel store sitting near the lingerie section. Need it be said women will be reluctant to buy from that section in your store? In fact chairs placed near the business section in a bookstore may foster sales as it gives a sense of pride to be seen buying the jargons of today’s business world, but be careful while placing chairs near the books for common ailments or sexual books… these are sensitive areas and most people would want to shop in private.

So retailers place that chair!

IS YOUR STORE ON FACEBOOK?

Know what is in news more than the swine flu? The success stories of Twitter and Facebook and engines that drive social media marketing. A few years back when I started out on Orkut and Facebook, it was an irresistible forum to connect with old friends. Today the virtual community is a demographic profile by itself.  Want to buy a new product? Travel to a new place? Understand how to operate a new piece of equipment? The blogs have it all.

For the uninitiated, the social web is a combination of social networks, photo and video sharing, blogs, micro blogs, social tagging and bookmarking, thus bringing the customer voice to the fore  in a big way. These tools once thought of as a pastime for teenagers, has today taken the online branding world by storm.

The social web, the interactive arm of the internet is growing by leaps and bounds. In this highly internet – centric age retail companies are hot in pursuit. Starbucks that had not advertised for a long time has come out no hold barred on the cyberspace. The site My Starbucks Idea launched in March 2008 is a great social media idea that aims to initiate a buzz across the web. The idea being to get everyone to talk about the new ideas customers suggest applying in Starbucks.

Target made its first foray via Facebook for the back-to-school season. Zappos.com an online retailer specializing in footwear have an impressive social media campaign. Zappos has over 400 employees using Twitter. They are very focused on customer service, engaging people on the web and building relationships. When you buy from Zappos you can Tweet what you bought and post it to Facebook. But the rules of this game are different. As the landscape of the collective is changing many retailers are hesitant to dip their toes in the social media marketing waters. But look at the statistics: as on April 2009, (source: Navigating the Social Media Landscape, Colman Brohan Davis)

1. 133 million blogs tracked by Technorati since 2002 (with 7.4 million blogs
2. posted in the last 120 days)
3. 200 million active users on Facebook
4. 100.9 million viewers watched 6.3 billion videos on YouTube in January 2009 alone
5. 6 million Twitter users as of April 2009 (with a projected 12.1 million by year-end)
6. 34 million registered LinkedIn users to date (with a growth rate of 1 million every 17 days)

Even if you do not want to embrace the current times, the voice of the public will be talking about you. A simple search on any store or product will give you more user generated data than the company websites. With such a huge customer base the question today is can retailers afford not to be part of this mammoth interactive medium? Can they afford the loss?

Page Turner

Page Turner.

WINDOW DRESSING

WINDOW DRESSING

The world people say is shrinking. Really? It still takes 24 hrs to travel from Chennai to Toronto. But what has really changed is the world has started looking more and more alike especially when we speak retail. There was a time when souvenirs from a country have a unique value. The Arabian souq, the Italian pizzeria, the American fast food, Indian bazaar. Today they have their presence worldwide, and in a sickening similar fashion. Be it B’lore, Beijing, Beirut or Boston, the very same McDonalds, Starbucks, Levi, Gucci, Nike, Sony stores line streets with the same array of products. As we say most stores are alike regardless of what they sell, the point of differentiation needs to be created in the retail environment.

So how would you convert a passerby browser into a buyer? Especially in the present times when feeling the pinch of the down economy every retailer must compete harder than ever for its piece of a shrinking pie. First things first. Make the passerby a browser. This calls for the merchandise shouting from the windows. Yes! The Window Display. That attractive mannequin in that gorgeous attire that would make every woman wish she owned the outfit. Window displays – the welcome call by the retailer but who’s listening? Take a few steps outside the store. The target place from where the windows call out. What do we see? The flooded streets, people swarming in all directions and desperately trying to avoid tripping, the vehicles hooting it way out of traffic jams and don’t forget the sweltering heat. In this scenario how many of those potential browsers would actually stop, raise their heads above to the glint of the sunlight to view the window display? A glass that’s already darkened due to anti glare tints and of course the roadside pollution. So are the window displays not effective in crowded spaces? On a 100 ft road, the vehicles zoom past. The traffic signals, lanes and the ever present cyclists keep our eyes glued to the road. In a mall people have a leisurely stroll, there’s no glare of the sun, no traffic or pollution. Lined with shops on all sides it’s also very confusing.

The window display exists by grace of the relevance of the merchandise in the store. A mannequin may attract a lot of attention, but a book store? Stacks of detergent or kitchen supplies at a grocers’ do not an attraction maketh. Then how does a grocer, bookseller, or an electrical appliance retailer fill up his windows to attract customers?

The art of window display is very unique to the store. A bookstore may not be able to attract customers by just placing the latest bestsellers on its windows simply because books are not covered keeping the retailer in mind. It is based on the story inside. Hence an abstract design in grey and blue cannot be seen and read from a ten feet distance and that is where the browser will be. So the windows would have huge blowups of the book cover. Apparel retailing has shown various innovations on the streets of Pondy bazaar. The whole retail store entrance is designed according to the promotion. A grocer on the other hand includes an array of promotional offers bright and big on its windows.

To the extent to which there are tricks, to the degree to which there is art in strategy, and sometimes the irrationality of their combinations has the power to attract our attention.